ArchivedPurgatoryHere are some Bible verses which indicate a state of purification after death:
Matthew 12:32
32 "And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come. NAS
The context of the verse states that any person who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, which does not prove anything about purgatory, it teaches there is one sin that leads straight to the lake of fire.
1 Corinthians 3:15
15 If any man's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire. NAS
We have already covered this one, and it does not teach purification after death.
1 Peter 3:19
19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, NAS
Shall we put this in full context? I believe we covered this one before also and it does not teach purgatory.
Hebrews 12:14
14 Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. NAS
Sanctification is a gift and is imputed to all believers by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Again this does not teach purgatory.
Revelation 21:27
27 and nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. NAS
Either you can’t read English or you are being obtuse. Those whose names are in the Lamb’s book of life enter heaven all others do not. This does not teach a period of purification.
There are no NT Scriptures that teach purification after death, and only the non-canonical book of 2 Maccabees refers to such a “traditional” belief developed after the close of the canon. No prophet of God or Moses mentions or alludes to a “period of purification” after death. 42
7 Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.
43
He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view;
44
for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.
45
But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
46
Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
The fact this book was not even accepted as part of the Catholic Bible until the Protestant reformation calls this "doctrine" into question. It comes across as a self-serving addition to Scripture to maintain control of Catholics. The date 2 Maccabees was written is another cause for rejecting it as canon.
The Bible is clear we get one chance on this earth to live in obedience to God and then comes the judgment, there is no 3rd option.
1 Maccabees:
6. Date:
1 Maccabees must have been written before the Roman conquest under Pompey, since the writer speaks of the Romans as allies and even friends (8:1,12; 12:1; 14:40); i.e. the composition of the book must have been completed (unless we except chapters 14-16; see below) before 63 BC, when Pompey conquered Jerusalem, and Judea became a Roman province. We thus get 63 BC as a terminus ad quem. Moreover, the historical narrative is brought down to the death of Simon (16:16), i.e. to 135 BC. We have thus an undoubted terminus a quo in 135 BC. The book belongs for certain to the period between 135 and 63 BC. But 1 Macc 16:18-24 implies that John Hyrcanus (died 105 BC) had for some time acted as successor to Simon, and Reuss, Ewald, Fritzsche, Grimm, Schurer, Kautzsch, etc., are probably right in concluding from 16:23 f that John was dead when the book was completed, for we have in this verse the usual formula recording the close of a royal career (see 1 Kings 11:41; 2 Kings 10:34, etc.), and the writer makes it sufficiently understood that all his acts were already "entered in the public annals of the kingdom" (Ewald, History of Israel, V, 463, note), so that repetition was unnecessary. But Bertheau, Keil, Wellhausen and Torrey draw the contrary conclusion, arguing that John had but begun his rule, so that at the time of writing there was practically nothing to record of the doings subsequent to 135, when John succeeded Simon (see EB, III, 2860 (Toy)). In 1 Macc 13:30 we read that the monument erected in 143 BC by Simon in memory of his father and brothers was standing at the time when this book was written, words implying the lapse of say 30 years at least. This gives a terminus a quo of 113 BC. Moreover, the panegyric on Simon (died 135 BC) and his peaceful rule in 14:4-15 leaves the impression that he had been long in his grave. We cannot be far wrong in assigning a date for the book in the early part of the last century BC, say 80 BC.
Destinon (Die Quellen des Flavius Josephus, I, 1882, 80), followed by Wellhausen (IJG, 1894, 222 f), maintained that Josephus (died circa 95), who followed 1 Maccabees up to the end of chapter 13, could not have seen chapters 14-16 (or from 14:16?), or he would not have given so meager an account of the high-priesthood of Simon (see Ant, XIII, vi, 7), which the author of 1 Maccabees describes so fully in those chapters. But Josephus must have used these chapters or he could not have written of Simon even as fully as he does.
2 Maccabees
Date
The book must have been written sufficiently long after 161 BC, the year with which the record closes, to allow mythical tales of the martyrdoms in 2 Macc 6 f and the history of the supernatural appearances in 3:24-30, etc., to arise. If we allow 30 years, or the lifetime of a generation, we come down to say 130 BC as a terminus a quo. There is probably in 15:36 a reference to the Book of Es (so Cornill, Kautzsch and Wellhausen, IJG4, 302 f) which would bring the terminus a quo down to about 100 BC. That 2 Maccabees was written subsequently to 1 Maccabees (i.e. after 80 BC) is made certain by the fact that the Jews now pay tribute to Rome (2 Macc 8:10,36). Since Philo, who died about 40 AD, refers to 2 Macc 4:8-7:42 (Quod omnis probus liber, Works, edition Mangey, II, 459), the book must have been composed before 40 AD. This is confirmed by the certainty that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (70 AD), for the city still exists and the temple services are in full operation (3:6, etc.). Hebrews 11:35 f is no doubt an echo of 2 Macc 6:18-7:42 and shows that the unknown author of Hebrews had 2 Maccabees before him. The teaching of the book represents the views of the Pharisees about the middle of the last century BC. A date about 40 BC would agree with all the evidence.
http://www.studylight.org/enc/isb/view.cgi?number=T5647
The Sadduccees would have rejected 2nd Maccabees based on the fact they denied the resurrection of the dead.
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